Alley Money

Valentin, a seven‑year‑old on an endless summer, sat with his eyes glued to a grey CRT monitor. His fingers manipulated arrow keys as his mouse directed a crosshair by which to doom warbling demons. Red, pixelated violence beamed from the screen and a MIDI soundtrack crackled out of a pair of speakers, much to Valentin’s delight.

The new man Mother brought into their house—an apparent alternative to his father’s presence; new masculinity—was intimidating and strange, although the video games the man brought with him in a neat album with CDs instead of photographs were a form of magic to thaw any icy apprehension. That Tuesday morning, Valentin and his mother were alone in the basement unit. The mother’s new friend was not there, and Valentin did not wonder where the man had gone. Above the basement towered a white cottage that reminded him of castles. The full extent of the cottage could not be seen due to lush firs that bordered its perimeter. The sight of it had granted Valentin a kind of pride-by-association when he’d tell school friends where he lived. He’d point to the impressive building as they walked up to it and, with pride, say “There!”

The fact that the boys had to take the sloped ramp down to the basement door instead of up to the lavish wrought iron gate did not change the aura of the place.

“Valik, Ivan is outside. He has something for me. Go get it, please.”

Valentin hit the grey ESC key and turned toward his mother. At home, she always let down her flowing, brown hair from the business-like updo she usually wore. Her green eyes, kind from behind her glasses, had a softness to them. Her face was free of the stern makeup she wore on workdays. Why, he wondered, was she home with him at all? He did not mind and simply enjoyed her presence. The lack of makeup on her face, her loose hair, made him feel a sense of peace and comfort. Valentin had no understanding of what separated him and his mother from Father—or rather, Ivan—and forced them to live apart, why a new man came into their lives. The words for it would come later. Intuition said that what had happened was part of life’s unstoppable, larger flow, which could not be asked questions. Likewise, Valentin also did not notice how his mother’s inclination to refer to Father as ‘Ivan’ had slowly eroded away the words Father, Dad, and Papa from his own lips. Mother’s refusal to see Ivan also began to seem a natural part of a newly restructured world. Valentin ran outside.

The morning sun made Ivan’s yellow pickup truck burst with saturated color. The mere sight of it excited. Valentin skipped up the ramp and came up to Ivan’s window. Ivan wore his wavy, light brown hair in a ponytail. Valentin had never seen any other fathers wear their hair that long, which made Ivan uniquely his own. Ivan’s rugged clothes made it apparent that he only stopped by to deliver whatever Valentin’s mother had wanted him to take, before driving off to carry, to build, to polish. Ivan greeted Valentin with play in his voice.

“Hi, Raaabbit!” The indelible nickname came drawn out, exuding love, mischief.

“Hi!”

Valentin couldn’t help but smile at the sight of the man who’d become Ivan. His yellow arrival had grown to augur adventure and carefree amusement, which usually only occurred on Fridays.

“Listen, Rabbit, I have to go to work soon. Give it to your mom, okay?” Ivan handed him a blank, brown envelope—one meant to hold photographs. Valentin held it and waited for further instructions.

“Okay, so I’ll go. Maybe we’ll go on some trip this weekend, huh? I’ll choose some park for us.”

“Yeah! Okay!”

Valentin then walked back to the basement unit while periodically turning to look in the yellow car’s direction. Ivan waited there with a smile and waved each time Valentin looked back; their ritual. At the bottom of the slope to the basement door, the car could no longer be seen. Valentin listened as it drove off, then looked down at the envelope in his hands and tried to discern what it held within. He squeezed it. Not satisfied with what touch conveyed, he decided to carefully open it. He’d only ever seen such envelopes hold the photographs his father had developed. Instead of family photographs, Valentin looked at a stack of bills.

He’d never touched money of that kind. He’d seen it being handled by his mother, or by Ivan on their adventures, but Valentin only ever touched coins. He burrowed his hand inside, crinkling the envelope as he pulled the stack into daylight. The weight of the stack was alien, and its value seemed incalculable and somehow compelling. He felt gripped by an overwhelming sense of curiosity, though a spectre of fear made his stomach ache. Without trying to count, Valentin took what seemed a humble slice of bills out of the stack. How could anyone tell that the stack had grown slightly thinner? He pushed the separated bills into a pocket in his beige cargo shorts and put the main stack back into the envelope. With the envelope looking the same as it did in Ivan’s hand, Valentin opened the door and walked up to Mother.

“Here, mama.”

“Oh, thank you.” She took the envelope and put it down on a table near a folder of her work documents, then occupied herself at the kitchen counter. She did not open it in front of him, much to his relief. Valentin lingered in the living room, feeling the weight in his pocket, forgetting about demons in need of slaying. He decided he had to go outside.

“Mama, I’m gonna go see if Vova and Kostya want to play outside.”

“Okay, just don’t go far, and be careful! Come back for lunch soon!”

Valentin wasted no time. He put on his sandals and walked up the street until he reached another, large cottage. He pushed open the gate, then, instead of running up the wide steps to the imposing main entrance, he took a side path that ran along the right side of the garden. It took him to a separate small unit which was attached to the larger building. Vova and Kostya lived there; a pair of brothers he’d spend time with after school, and almost every day of the summer vacation. Vova had been a year younger than Valentin, while Kostya was a year older, which made Kostya the natural leader among the boys. Valentin knocked and was greeted by Vova’s blond head peeking from the crack of the door.

“Hey, wanna go out?”

As the door opened wider, Valentin could see Kostya approaching.

“Come in!” Kostya’s commanding voice always made Valentin defer to him, and so he timidly walked into their apartment after taking his sandals off. The floor felt perfectly cool. The three boys were at the computer that stood in the living room. Valentin marveled at how expansive their apartment seemed compared to his own basement. He couldn’t even begin to imagine the insides of the cottages they all lived by. It was time to coax the brothers outside.

“I thought we could go walk around. Maybe visit our camp.”

“Nah, it’s so hot out. Let’s just play some video games.” Kostya spoke for both brothers, as Vova made no attempt to express a preference. Had it been any other day—a day without the weight burning in his pocket—Valentin would have gladly sat down beside them to watch Kostya play. Their reluctance to go out compelled him to force the issue by revealing his new, strange wealth.

“But look at what my mom gave me,” Valentin stuck his hand down his pocket, felt the smooth surface of the bills, then took them out. They sat adult and inappropriate in his small hand. The two brothers looked at the stack with furrowed brows. Before Valentin realized, the stack of bills was in Kostya’s larger hand.

“Oh shit, why’d she give you so much?” He flipped through the bills like they were playing cards—200s, 100s, 50s. Vova inched closer to look into his brother’s hands.

“Just… For my birthday.” Valentin tried to suppress his discomfort at the money being out of his hands.

“It’s your birthday?”

“Um, can I have it back?”

“Yeah,” Kostya handed back the money with a thin veneer of disinterest.

“So, where do you wanna go?”

“I don’t know. Want to go buy snacks, then go to our camp?”

Kostya hummed with thought, making Valentin shift, fidget.

“Sure, let’s go. Come on, Vova.”

The boys put on their sandals and walked out into the street. The sun by then had been baking the asphalt of the road all morning, making the bricks of the pavement scorching hot. The sky broadcast its flawless summer-blue in every which direction, and made possibilities seem limitless.

With hot weather in full force, Valentin began to feel thirsty and excited to get any choice of drinks his heart desired. The boys walked down the center of an empty road, sometimes moving back to the pavement when a car materialized out of a corner or announced itself behind them. Kostya led the boys towards a nearby convenience store Valentin had never been to. After crossing a large, buzzing road, they entered the store through some hanging plastic flaps that felt cool against the skin. The store’s atmosphere was an order of magnitude cooler than the outside due to the ceaseless labor of a large AC unit. The brothers went down the snack aisle, while Valentin found the drinks section. Kostya picked things out with ease, his arms growing full of bags of chips and chocolate bars, some of which he handed to Vova to carry for him. For Valentin, the freedom of choice was wholly foreign and disorienting. As he struggled to pick out a drink, Kostya came up and suggested three large bottles: coke, grape juice, and chocolate milk. The shop was empty aside from the boys, and the clerk sat bored behind the counter as they walked up to it with their spoils. An assortment of saturated, loud colors was shoved onto the smooth counter, followed by three towering bottles, as well as a last-minute collection of candies from the counter’s displays. Valentin was suddenly unsure of whether he had enough money to pay for such a large selection. He fidgeted with his hand in his pocket, rubbing the bills, as the clerk began to sort the treasures. The clerk’s eyes went up from the snacks, eyeing the boys. She called out a price. Valentin froze up, not knowing how to proceed, realizing he’d never been in such a position before. Kostya intervened and told Valentin to give the clerk one of the bills. Valentin’s hand came out of his pocket holding two 100s, having already forgotten the number the clerk named, and making no attempt to hand over a fitting amount. She took the bills in her wrinkled hand, and in an overflow of suspicion, decided to ask:

“Where did you boys get so much money?”

The question shocked Valentin into silence. Again, Kostya stepped in.

“It’s our birthday.”

The clerk gave Kostya barely a glance and kept her gaze on the boy with the moneyed pocket who had the look of guilt and fear in his ghostly, white face. She pursued the matter no further.

“Okay. You gave me too much,” she handed Valentin one of the bills back, then gave him a few smaller ones broken off from the larger bill she kept.

The boys walked away from the store with two large bags of loot. Valentin felt the relief of sunlight, though burdened by the remaining bills in his pocket. He realized he’d hoped the store would take care of the entirety of it. The severity of the matter eluded him, but some understanding trickled into the mind due to the transaction at the store. Valentin momentarily thought of giving the bills back to Mother, but the idea seemed tantamount to admission of a crime, so his thoughts raced elsewhere under the scorching, remorseless sun.

The boys made it back to their neighborhood, then veered off the pavement over to a nearby field. It had been marked by loose sand, dry, prickly weeds, and some patches of gnarled, twisted trees that kept their hardy foliage despite a weather that exorcised all else until what was left were bare branches. They approached one such tangle of trees, ducked into a small passage, and emerged into what had been their makeshift camp. There was a wooden board in the center and a mismatched number of broken chairs in the nexus between the trees. The sand was covered by an abandoned rug. The boys had labored to carve out comfort from the tangle of branch and leaf, and to rest there had been their secret pleasure. Their arrival with a trove of unrestricted goods made the scene feel luxurious beyond their dreams. Adolescent feast. They began to arrange the bags, bars, and packs on the board, then once the bottles were out, they realized in frustration they’d forgotten to get cups. It was a small dent, one they quickly patched over by simply pouring the sweet liquids into their open mouths from a slight distance, not touching the bottles with their lips. Some of the liquids ended up soaking into the rug, the sand below, the dry wood, their clothes. The hideout crinkled and cracked with the sounds of packages being manipulated and torn open. The boys snacked with relish and felt pleased with the large selection still left. Some of the snacks were hidden in a small cabinet they’d dragged into the tangle of trees. Their stock. Eventually each one felt like they could handle no more sweets, nor chips, nor waterfalled sips. In the ensuing lull, Kostya brought up the rest of the money.

“So… What else will you buy?”

“I don’t know. Maybe save it or get some toys,” Valentin’s head slowly lowered until he looked down at their feet and the dusty rug there. The money had become an unwanted burden with which there wasn’t that much to do with anyway. He resented the bills still sitting in his pocket, overstaying their welcome.

“Do you want some? I don’t need that much.”

Vova immediately turned to see if his big brother would take some of the money. Kostya hesitated, and with some discomfort marking his face, refused.

“No, we don’t need it. We have our own at home. And we have to go now.”

The refusal surprised and saddened Valentin, leaving him alone with the acrid burden in the early afternoon. Kostya inspected the camp one last time before turning to leave. The unfinished bottles were pushed into some sand, and the empty bags of chips were shoved into crevices in a wall of bushes.

The boys emerged from the camp empty handed and slowly walked across the sandy field back to the neighborhood road. Some sand and the occasional pebble invaded their sandals. Once on the pavement by the road, the three stomped their feet and rattled them to loose anything stuck between foot and sandal.

“We’re going home,” Kostya declared, and turned in the direction of the cottage they lived by. Vova followed him, then turned to secretly wave Valentin goodbye. Valentin’s home beckoned to him where it stood further down the street. It would be natural to make the short walk home, to take the ramp down to the door, and enjoy the quiet afternoon by the computer.

Despite the proximity, Valentin felt it would be impossible to walk into the house while still carrying the bills. In mounting despair, he walked back into the sand of the field. He walked aimlessly as his mind groped for some solution to an inordinate problem. He took out the frustratingly numerous bills—so many, why so many?—and was choked. Sudden tears strung his eyes as his chin quivered with animosity and helplessness. The boiling point was reached and the boy’s hands remembered that the offensive, abusive bills were mere paper. And as could be done with mere paper, Valentin began to rip and tear, bill by bill. The shreds were caught by a heat wind that came from nowhere as they began to skip and float through the sand and its minute dunes, away from the boy. He watched them recede and be lost in the field, until his breath came back and his eyes dried. He sniffled, collected himself, and walked back home, finally free.

He came home and put away his sandy sandals. Mother sat on the couch in the living room.

“Where have you been, Valik?” His mother’s voice was unusually heavy.

“Just with Kostya and Vova.”

“Valik, I called Ivan. Did you take some of the money from the envelope?”

Valentin was obliterated by the question. His senses were cast into disarray as he struggled to maintain a grip on reality.

“Valik, did you take some of the money in the envelope?”

“A bit. Just a bit.”

The calm his mother barely held onto crumbled at the boy’s minimized admission. Instead of her calm, at-home eyes, Valentin could see, for the first time, eyes of despairing frenzy.

“Where is it?”

“I—”

“Where?!” Her voice turned to iron as she struggled to maintain anger and authority over the tearful helplessness she felt herself giving into.

“It’s outside. I hid it outside.”

In a whirl, Valentin felt his wrist gripped roughly by Mother’s urgent hand with its sharp nails. Before he could orient himself, they were out on the street together. The sight of his mother outside of the house in her robe was bizarre and a testament to the magnitude of the crime.

“Where is it? Show me!” Her ragged shout shocked him into movement.

“H-here, it’s here!” He led his mother into the sandy field, to the likely spot of his confrontation with the bills. It was hard to tell. His mother looked around wildly as she gave in to tears and panic.

“I buried it here! I think it’s here.” And he went down to his knees and began to shift piles and piles away as his own tears cratered the loose sand below. His mother watched in disbelief, and when Valentin failed to produce any bills from the sand before him, she too couched down to search with him. When Valentin noticed Mother wildly looking through the sand, he slowly stood up and remained frozen by the incongruent display. His ears rang.

His mother stood up, then, and he could see in her beautiful hands a single torn fragment of a bill. Her panicked rage seemed to pass as a sound more harrowing filled his ears. It was as though her body urged her to sob, but her breathlessness could not perform it. So she stood in limbo between sobs and chopped breaths, staring at the torn piece in her hand. She mustered strength enough to utter the question that brought out the inevitable, scared truth from the boy.

“You tore them up?”

A cascade followed.

“I was scared I didn’t know I just I tore them up I’m sorry Mama I didn’t know I wanted to hide I can find them I can fix them maybe some are still here I I—”

The lovely mother stood catatonic in the field, her robe billowing in heat wind while the breathless child confessed. In the distance, shreds of paper continued to roll further and further away, hidden in the endless sand.

It was a summer day.